On January 17, 1921, in a north London theatre, “an English magician called Percy Thomas Tibbles literally and laboriously sawed through a sealed wooden box that contained a woman. It was a sensation and has since become one of the best known magic tricks, performed with all manner of tools and varying degrees of blood – always involving someone cut in half and nearly always with them miraculously put back together.” – The Guardian
Did Boris Lie About Post-Brexit Rules For UK Musicians Touring In Europe?
Britain’s musicians are anxious and angry about the fact that they’ll now have to get temporary work visas from every EU country they want to perform in, which will make touring the Continent difficult and expensive. Prime Minister Boris Johnson has claimed that EU negotiators gave him no choice in this. Now sources in Brussels say that, in fact, Johnson’s team turned down an offer to let British performers tour visa-free for up to 90 days because they didn’t want to make a reciprocal deal for European performers touring Britain. – The Independent (UK)
Paris Mayor Approves €250 Million Plan To Green The Champs-Elysées
That doesn’t just mean to make the boulevard more environmentally friendly. “Anne Hidalgo said the planned work, unveiled in 2019 by local community leaders and businesses, would turn the 1.9 km (1.2 mile) stretch of central Paris into ‘an extraordinary garden’. … The eight-lane highway is used by an average of 3,000 vehicles an hour, most passing through, and is more polluted than the busy périphérique ring road around the French capital.” – The Guardian
Author Ved Mehta, 86
Known for a 12-volume autobiography and more than a dozen more books, many of which got their start as New Yorker articles (he was a staff writer for decades), he had a carefully honed prose style full of vivid description — despite the fact that he had been blind from age 3. (His sense of hearing was said to be extraordinary.) – The New York Times
Kansas City Ballet Took A Long Time, But Finally Canceled The Rest Of The 2020-2021 Season
The ballet joins Kansas City’s other major performing arts organizations, which will certainly have an economic impact on KC’s central performing arts center. – Kansas City Star
With A New Book Called ‘I Hate Men,’ A French Author Has Truly Hit A Nerve
That’s not the only work making a claim that France has an extremely long way to go in reckoning with gender inequality in every arena of life, including and perhaps especially the arts. The author of I Hate Men: “Feminists have spent a lot of time and energy reassuring men that no, we don’t really hate them, that they’re welcome. Not much has happened in exchange.” – The New York Times
Check Out The Massive Investments In An Immersive Art Future
Can the arts return after more vaccinations and herd immunity? The investors certainly think so. “While traditional museums are discussing closures and mergers, the for-profit industry around experiential or immersive art is investing hundreds of millions of dollars into a business that currently has no audience in the U.S. because of the pandemic. It’s a gambit that has surprised market watchers.” – The New York Times
How Romance Writers Funded, And Spread Interest In, The Georgia Races With One Of Their Own
Writer Alyssa Cole explains why it makes sense that romance writers came together to raise money for Jon Ossoff and Rev. Raphael Warnock in the Georgia Senate runoff races (Stacey Abrams, who has engaged in massive voter turnout since her defeat at the ballot box in 2018, is also a romance writer under the pen name Selena Montgomery). “As far as romance novels and politics go, for people who are engaged in progressive politics, there is the link between the idea of optimism. One of the things that gets the reader through the book is knowing that at the end of the book, there will be some kind of resolution that leaves them feeling satisfied and uplifted. And I think people who read those kinds of romance novels and who write those kinds of romance novels are also seeking that in their real life.” – NPR
How Do Recent And New Films Handle Elder Decline?
There’s a mix, from viewer disorientation – meant to mimic that of a person experiencing dementia – to body horror. – The Hollywood Reporter
The Artists Secretly Creating Miniature Buildings For Street Mice Across England And Europe
The collective that makes the buildings – they call themselves AnonyMouse – are, they said through an interlocutor, “a loosely connected network of mice and men, originating in the town of Mälmo, in southern Sweden.” – BBC